Who's done it before?

Purchased my Copperband last week, he acclimated fine, and is very active in my tank, the one thing that concerns me is when i feed, he shows alot of interest in the food, he will bite, but spit it out, now when he spits it out it is smaller but im afraid he may not be getting enough.. ive been feeding twice a day to try and entice him to eat, im feeding a plethora of food mysis,brine,rods,coralfrenzy, cyclopeez, and a ton of other mixed up cubed foods, ive been using entice as a way to get him to eat, the tank he is in has the following inhabitants, a red head fairy wrasse, 5 chromis so nothing agressive, or to agressive while eating anyone have any tips on getting him to feed better?? i may be resorting to live if i cant get him on frozen but thats more $ that if it comes to it ill spend but i want to be sure i exhaust all options at this point. Thanks in advance!

 

Keep trying with frozen, he may take to it at some point. I would say you should have a plan for live food if frozen ends up not working for a few days.

 

Yea ive been looking up places i can get live, i found a LFS that can get it for me if i need it, im going to run to the store tonight and get him some clams to see if he will pick at that. im not going to give up on this guy, and will do what i need to for his survival, he is grazing really good on my rocks eating copepods and such, and i did get in some maricultured corals with feather dusters on the rock that im sure he will find and chow down. Any suggestions on a good live food? i know brine doesnt have much nutrition in it?

 

If you have to resort to live keep feeding mostly the frozen (make sure you thaw it before feeding) and just add a small amount of the live with it to see if you can trick it into eating. If that still doesnt work after a few attempts you can alway switch to all live food then.

 

That sounds like a good plan! What do kind of live food do you suggest? triggerpods? i have plenty of copepods in my tank for him to eat but ill have to go pick up some live for my feeding tomorrow. I know i can get reef nutrition locally, and dts? or something like that.. Thanks for the help!!

 

I'd try the mysid or the brine... match it to the frozen stuff you have.

 

Makes sense, i appreciate the input, ill be checking into the mysid tonight, i already have a brine shrimp hatchery thing that ive used before, seemed to work pretty good, and everything went nuts over it but ive heard the nutritional value isnt always the best there.

 

It's true, the brine are nutritionally deficient, but if you do some searching there is a method known as gut loading that is often used when raising them to feed babies that will increase the nutritional value significantly.
In either case the mysid shrimp are probably preferable anyway.